Under the Hood of Church - Daniel Ehrman

00:01 - Speaker 1 It's just very aggressive financial management and we saw that going on and because you kind of get under the hood of a church when you're doing a facility development project and you're figuring out the ministries and what they're about, but then you also see the finances and those dynamics at play and so you know they were very aggressive and very successful, at least on the surface, and that persisted for over a decade. My name is Dan Ehrman and I work at Tyndall House Publishers as the director of church relations and strategy. I've worked with churches all of my career and also work in real estate for churches in the Chicago area, so I'm excited to be joining you today here for my Faithly Story. 00:48 - Speaker 2 Welcome to Faithly Stories, the podcast that brings you inspiring tales from conversations with church leaders as they navigate the peaks and valleys of their faith journeys through their ministry work and everyday life. Join us as we delve into their challenges, moments of encouragement and answered prayers. The Faithly Stories podcast is brought to you by Faithly, an online community committed to empowering church leaders, pastors, staff and volunteers. Learn more at faithlyco. Get ready to be uplifted and inspired as we unveil the heart of faith through stories from the front lines of ministry. On the Faithly Stories Podcast. 01:30 - Speaker 3 Could you tell me how your faith journey started? 01:32 - Speaker 1 I was born into a very Christian household and my parents are both Christians and raised me in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, as they say. And so, yeah, I grew up in church. We were at church a few days every week and was part of dinner conversation every day, and a lot of that rubbed off. You know, here I am today. You know, still trying to follow the Lord in my work and in life and with my family today. 01:57 - Speaker 3 But was there a period, like in your early childhood, where it kind of like hit you that like Jesus was real, that I'm a sinner? 02:04 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean my parents reminisce on me coming to faith at, you know, four or five years old. 02:09 I don't have any recollection of that whatsoever, but I think it's a series of inflection points where you have certain memories and whether that be in grade school and a memory of thinking about the lostness of my peers in school where they had, they were rejecting the Lord and having a heart for them to come to faith. 02:31 And then in high school, of kind of pressing, pressing the boundaries and exploring things and God meeting me in that, of going on mission trips, being in uncomfortable, unknown environments and praying and seeing God show up in ways that were beyond what we could ask or imagine in some of those contexts. Other times in my 20s, my dad owned a company that designed and built church buildings and I worked with him for 20 years and still work with him in an adjunct capacity today. You know seeing the ugly underbelly of church, sometimes when you're in the business side of finance and things, literally yelling at God of how could you allow this church to do what they're doing and like just being frustrated and taking you know that was 20 years ago and seeing the long tail of how God is both just and merciful in wanting righteousness for his people in the church, but he's slow to anger and his grace and mercies are new every morning. 03:35 - Speaker 3 Could you give us some examples in your past about those mission trips? 03:38 - Speaker 1 Sure, I remember one of the first mission trips I went on. I was in college and my buddies were MKs from central Mexico and so we took vans down to the border and then hopped on a Greyhound and went another 12 hours into central Mexico from there and at the border the guards wanted a bribe and just paid it and on, on, on. You know others on the trip were like no, we're absolutely not going to pay a bribe and we ended up going through security for hours and praying in that and we saw how we carried ourselves and what we were about and what we were doing. They relented and sent us our way with a smile and it's an interesting dynamic of that. 04:21 There were times around a trip where there was a miscommunication about the expectation. We thought we were going to help out at an English camp and we showed up and he said, oh yeah, tomorrow we're going to be teaching classes, six different classes starting tomorrow for four hours every day and we had to come up with curriculum. The spot was really stressful but God provided and people raised up and rose to the occasion and navigated that. So those are some of the things and trips. 04:51 - Speaker 3 And what about the bad experience with the church and the finance stuff? What happened in the beginning and like how did that experience kind of shape the way you saw church then? 05:00 - Speaker 1 Yeah, it was just very aggressive financial management and we saw that going on and because you kind of get under the hood of a church when you're doing a facility development project and you're figuring out the ministries and what they're about, but then you also see the finances and those dynamics at play, and so you know they were very aggressive and very successful, at least on the surface, and that persisted for over a decade and it was stuff where you know it wasn't, it was a client, it wasn't for me to say, but it eventually ended up becoming very public and was a really messy situation and, you know, tough to see. 05:39 And yet God works in the sense where, when the church is about, god works in a sense where when the church is about proclaiming the glory of God, to teach the Bible, god's word doesn't return void. And so he delights in meeting with us and he's gracious to us and he condescends to meet us where we are, wherever we are, each day, and he doesn't want to leave us to persist in sin or just in. You know he doesn't leave us to that, but he also isn't strong-armed with us in a nasty way, he's gracious. And so to see that unfold with the church and that you know, a lot of good discipleship happened, a lot of growth in God's word, a lot of people came to faith through the ministry, and so it just is. It's complicated. 06:32 - Speaker 3 Could you get into a little bit more specifics, without talking about what who the church is, because it's more of my curiosity of churches don't get audited financially at all. I know that because I worked at a church for a long time I was a pastor for 10 years so it's just more of like a case study of if you come across, because I don't even know what you mean by aggressive financing or budgeting yeah, like what were some of the red flags and how did you go about navigating it? And for people who come across this and they are uncomfortable, like making it public, like how should they navigate something like this where the funds are being misappropriated? 07:08 - Speaker 1 There wasn't any misappropriation of funds, necessarily it was in this context, it was an aggressive approach to using debt. 07:18 - Speaker 3 So do you mean like they would take out more loans assuming a certain revenue stream, and then they got? 07:23 - Speaker 1 in trouble. It's complicated in the sense of the theology of debt, and I've seen churches that are just view the debtor as a slave of the lender and take that very literally and have a zero debt policy and operate that well and do just fine. And then you also, I think, have. I don't fall in that camp personally. I think there is kind of a time value of money, and there are, you know, in the same way you take out a mortgage on a house, it's not credit card debt at 30 a month or a year, but it's, you know, it's a more modest amount of debt that's managed and structured and useful. 08:00 And I think we have a sense of a time value of ministry that has to go in conjunction with that. And so if your church is in a spot where you feel like you need a gymnasium for youth ministry and outreach, but it would take, you know, 15 years to save up enough money for that, that's okay. But that also means you're not going to have that facility for 17 years until you break ground and have the capital saved up for it. And what's the lost ministry opportunity for 17 years? That's most of a generation at that point, a generation being 20, 25 years. 08:38 So those things have to be weighed out and navigated, be weighed out and navigated. And so, in this context that I'm referring to, it was, you know, they were borrowing many times what their annual giving was in doing some aggressive development. Some of it was okay and I think some of it just kind of caught up with them and there were unexpected costs along the way and things like that. So it wasn't that it was intended to be aggressive. It became. Aggressive is, I think, the fairest way to put it. 09:09 - Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, I think history of economics in the US has shown the cycle of debt and crash. When debt gets too crazy, the crash becomes a lot harder. So for you, so like you grew up in the church, you had these experiences in college and then you kind of face this reality of how the relationship between money and capitalism and the church and so how has that all shaped you to become the type of disciple or your understanding of theology today? 09:37 - Speaker 1 I think it's driven me toward a few things is generosity is close to the heart of God and that I can trust the Lord with my finances, and that I think sometimes we view giving as a burden or 10% off the top, and I really think that's a mediocre viewpoint and it takes the joy out of it. It's following the Lord's invitation to joy and giving is a way to financially participate not only in actively trusting the Lord with all that you have, but you get to partake in support ministry that you would never do and never touch and yet God is working through that and you get to be a part of that and partake in the joy of being part of God at work in the world. So I really view giving as a gift to the giver as much as support to ministry, and so I just take a lot of delight in trying to be generous and putting finances before the Lord and doing that with my wife and our family and looking at each year of you know what ministries can we support, how do we support the local church and you know, allocate and strategize and all those things. It's part of what drove me to come to Tyndale House Publishers is people don't know the story of Tyndale in that the founders, margaret and Ken Taylor, gifted all of the shares of the business to the foundation that they set up, and the dividends of profits on sales at Tyndale go toward global missions. And so every year Jeremy Taylor leads the Tyndale Foundation he's the grandson of the founders and they give between four and six million a year to global missions out of profits from the business. And so you know it becomes. 11:25 Not only are we selling Bibles and books that edify people and grow them. You know discipleship, I was talking about giving, and we have some great books about giving. Randy Alcorn has a book with us called money and money giving and like eternity or something like that, and really having heaven as the focus for having a viewpoint of what is money in light of eternity. You know resources like that that are going to build into the church and build toward discipleship, and some of its entertainment and novels and things like that too, and there's a great place for that to have. You know clean fiction and things of that nature, but you know, having that going toward Tyndale has the foundation has helped fund 55 new translations of the Bible in new languages globally since its founding in 19. It's amazing. 12:17 So what do you do exactly at Tyndale? So Tyndale has always had a focus on sort of democratizing access to God's Word. We were founded around the Living Bible and that was huge in the 70s. It was a paraphrase of the Bible and kind of blew up. As you know. Here's this accessible way to read through God's Word. And then we came out with the New Living Translation in 19, where it was a group of 90 scholars, some of the foremost Bible scholars, and I have a collection of commentaries before me. Some of these guys were part of that committee that put that translation together. 12:53 But it's an English Bible that is in pretty colloquial terms. You're not going to find propitiation, for instance, as part of the translation. And so, because we've always been consumer focused, we haven't always had a focus on the church itself. And so, because we've always been consumer focused, we haven't always had a focus on the church itself. And so I have this background where I have a master's from Wheaton in evangelism and leadership. I have an undergrad in biblical studies, I've worked for construction and architecture churches. I've worked in Christian radio for seven years and I know a lot of churches, a lot of different backgrounds, and so I'm leading our church initiative at Tyndale. 13:26 - Speaker 3 What does that mean? Church initiative. 13:28 - Speaker 1 Are you contacting churches or yeah, so some of it is. We have a new website called Church Connect. That's church-connectcom, and that's really. We've restructured all of our books around. How would a church consume and use our resources rather than a typical person in the pew, more of like a church director or a pastor, and so some of that is helping to organize that, and then also working on connecting with pastors and church leaders and keeping a pulse of what do we see going on in ministry and being able to resource them well and effectively along the way. When did you? 14:05 - Speaker 3 So, like for people in the audience, you mentioned that you lived in China near the Mongolian Bulk, so when did that? Happen throughout your journey. 14:12 - Speaker 1 Right out of college I worked in Inner Mongolia in a city called Hohat for a year and a half and that was kind of my first job out of university. I was interested in working abroad and was able to work with an organization that expedited a lot of that for me and tested the waters without making a lifelong commitment to it. In a sense, what were you doing there? I taught English at a university and it was Inner Mongolia University of Technology and I was part of their English department and sort of the English language speaking kind of practicum side of the school. 14:50 - Speaker 3 Did you go to any other countries or China was the only foreign country? 14:53 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I spent some time in Thailand and then, when I came back from that, I have done mission trips in Mexico, dominican Republic, czech Republic, and I think I did one other one too. So yeah, it popped around a little bit. 15:09 - Speaker 3 So for you, what has been the most worthwhile benefit of all these mission trips? Because a lot of times mission trips a lot of younger teenagers go but they don't fully understand. They're just kind of like experienced at short-term missions. But for you it's been longer and you're older, and for me I noticed that, like people who never kind of like leave their hometown, like they're in a little bubble, and so even the United States, do you think you go from New York to LA? 15:34 - Speaker 2 It's like oh, I'm a big shot. 15:35 - Speaker 3 But until you kind of explore the world, you're like, oh wait, the world is so much bigger than I realized. 15:40 - Speaker 1 It is. I think there's an ongoing debate about mission trips and things of that nature. Where does it really actually benefit the people that you're going there to serve? And in some cases it does, in some cases it doesn't. I think it's really important, though, in terms of just what you described, of sort of blowing up your preconceived ideas of what the world is. It gets you out of just seeing it as your neighborhood, even though there's a lot of richness and goodness of people who have never traveled a hundred miles and they can have a very robust and fulfilling life without the travel. But I do think for me, growing up in a fairly and then going and seeing people who are living on 500 bucks a year and are full of joy and you know that was powerful. And then on the spiritual side of seeing, you know we have so much of a Christian tradition and influence in America that I don't think people realize the extent of the impact of Christianity in America. In some ways it's understated how influential Christianity has been in the West. And to see other people in other countries navigating and not having the hope of the gospel and introducing people to that, you know there's a lot of richness to that. So I think you know mission trips aren't the main thing but they are an important thing and I think they can be a good mechanism for challenging people to follow the Lord in ways where they might not be as comfortable as day-to-day life. 17:19 What was your experience at radio like? Oh, radio is interesting. I worked for Salem Media Group and Salem has radio stations in major cities all over North America and in the US and they have predominantly two or three brands of radio. They have contemporary Christian music stations in about a dozen cities. They have Bible teaching preaching stations in about 40 cities and then in 35 cities where they have conservative political content. 17:51 And so I came in as kind of an expert in the church space in Chicago and worked in that hub and in the last that was probably the first four years I was exclusively focused on the Bible teaching preaching side of things and doing sales and hosting interviews and talking to pastors, and that led into then working with the conservative political side as well, and so that was interviewing politicians and business leaders and things of that nature, and you know it was amazing to meet so many people and to have those experiences but also to challenge some of the status quo of you know on the political side of you know, how can we engage on issues without contributing to you know? In politics I think there's idolatry that goes on politically in America. I think we can create idols out of a party and both parties create those idols and in some ways I feel like that idolatry. Both parties are worshiping the same idol, just from different sides. 18:55 And for us as Christians we care about issues, we care about people, but we don't want to contribute to the idols of our culture, and so navigating that was very difficult through COVID and all that it was trying. 19:08 - Speaker 3 It's funny because in the Old Testament idols were always objects, but modern idols are just ideas, so it's more like ideology. 19:17 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I think there can be actual physical idols still in our culture. I think a house or a car can be an idol and a lot of our context, or, you know, having the coolest shoes or the cool watch and you know those things are all trappings and in some ways we ascribe worship to those objects. So, yeah, but I think you're right, largely it is sort of ideas and whether that be power, money, sex, those things that are common to man and all those. 19:47 - Speaker 3 So, based on your experience with radio, what is your thoughts on the social media landscape, because transmission of information has drastically changed with the internet and the mobile phone, especially with like AI and VR and AR coming and like, even like the unreal engine of sex. It looks very real, yeah. What do you think about the distribution of information with all these new technologies outside of radio? 20:11 - Speaker 1 In some ways, you have new opportunities that are unprecedented, but I also think that we are in some ways entering a post-influence era, where you talk about AI and the impact of that, and we're gonna have more and more questions about what is real, what is substantive, and are we actually interacting with a person or a bot? 20:35 and is that actually what that person said or what AI recreated for them to say that someone programmed and that program was run just through a influence filter? Or how do you spike the most fear or anger out of the other side and get a reaction? 20:51 And so yeah, I think we're going to be actually going back toward in-person being more and more vital, where this interaction here that we're having. 21:02 You're in New York, I'm in the Chicago area, so you know we met at a conference last month but outside of having met there it would have been hard to make this connection in a sense, and so you know what is real. 21:16 I think some of the tangible in-person stuff is going to have heightened importance and people are recognizing that. You know, being able to hang out over a campfire or you know, grabbing coffee with someone in that sort of tangible physical interaction is the real substance of things. So you hear people speculate about AI and really go off the deep end on some of the speculation. But some of that, looking at if you can replicate consciousness in a sense, or ideas through we possess, more so than our ability to communicate or have a following or influence and things of those nature, but actually the fact that we are and that we have the spirit of the breath of God in us and that dynamic of us having a soul, is a huge differentiator in a world where AI runs amok and, all of a sudden, that worth of who we are becoming rooted in. We are image bearers of God is a powerful thing. 22:20 - Speaker 3 I'm realizing more and more what it means to be Imago Dei For you like. Yeah, with the evolution of you know, technology advancing, how do you think, in your understanding for Christians to really embody that meaning? You know that we are a reflection of God and his glory in Christ. 22:38 - Speaker 1 That's a big question. I think a lot of it is the simple day-to-day of remembering. You know, we don't start by reflecting on ourselves or reflecting on others, but the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And so the fear of the Lord means we look toward God, who is the maker and creator of all things and who he has revealed himself to be and who we are in light of who he is, and who we are in light of who he is. And that also then gives worth to people around us, because then they are that image bearer of God as well. And so you know that's unchanged. You know, I think that is a rock solid of reflecting on who he is, tells us who we are and gives worth to ourselves and to others. 23:26 - Speaker 3 Yeah, the reason why I ask that is, like I'm realizing as I get older, the more I spend time alone with the Lord and I'm actually experiencing his goodness, his kindness, his love, forgiveness For me. 23:34 Anyway, just the way my brain is wired, I'm like, oh, I know what it feels like to be loved and cared for, and so I just need to emulate that to other people. 23:43 And that simplified my approach to Christianity, because it's always in the past of like, oh, I got to know how to do these things, so it became very mechanical and formulaic, like, almost like you know, like in jujitsu or MMA, you're like practicing a move rather than, oh, as I'm moving with this other person, I'm learning things about myself, my weaknesses and strengths and their weaknesses and strengths, and then like how to handle myself in situations. 24:09 Do you know what I mean? So like went from a conceptual, like mathematical view of life to a oh, this is how I feel when I do something, like when I hurt someone else that I care about, or when I go astray from what I should and should not be doing, and when I feel really guilty and shameful, like the forgiveness oh, that's what other people might feel. So as I experienced more of this like you said, pathway to joy and I gained more joy I'm like, oh, I just want to help other people get to that place too, right, and so I understand that, no matter how much the world changes around me, I still need to do my part in being the kind of character that Christ is to other people, because that need will never change. 24:51 - Speaker 1 And doing the right thing and having you know the answer to the shibboleth du jour in different circles and like those things are super surfacy and there can be substance beneath them, but the substance is the Lord, not those things in and of themselves. And so, yeah, I think the richness of the Christian life is in the being, not in arriving. Life is in the being, not in arriving, and it becomes. Yeah, it's cliche to say it's not the destination, and yet it is the destination too, in that this is not our home, and you know we talked about mission trips earlier. That's a good reminder that this world as we know it is, that we are sojourners in this space and this isn't ours, this is not our inheritance, is not this world, it's the Lord himself, and all these things are added unto knowing him. So, yeah, it really is a shift to being ultimately returning back to walking with the Lord today, and that's what the Lord delighted in with Adam and Eve in the garden, of walking with them in the cool of the evening in the garden, and that God delights in knowing us and went so far as to the cross, despising the shame because of that love that he has for us, that he moves into relationship and that then informs how we interact with one another too, where, if God went to those extents to restore relationship with us that he wants us in likewise to move into relationship with one another and actually love each other effectively and to be in that as an overflow of himself. But yeah, the rote fitting in the cultural Christianity. You know, the faster that cultural Christianity can die, the better, in my opinion, where the things that we perceive as power, you know, sometimes we think of money and big buildings and all these things as being the powerful thing and having the biggest leadership conference and the most influential people and the biggest band and whatever that are these trappings that aren't actually substantive. The substance is the people of God and God's presence and him delighting and fellowshipping with us and moving into relationship with us, and so that stewardship of people that are entrusted to us are the things of substance, and all the other trappings are here today, gone tomorrow. 27:34 How did you get into real estate? My dad designed and built church buildings. I worked with him for full time for over a decade and off and on for another decade before and after that, and when you're doing architecture and financial planning and facilities development and construction, you end up touching real estate. And we just saw we effectively did all the work of a real estate broker and then saw someone else collect the commission on that and we were like, oh, we ended up partnering up with the guy and the three of us worked together and helped broker church facilities around Chicago. I mostly do the tech side of it. You know the things that way. So that's church building realty, dominguez. It takes point on the day-to-day of that and the three of us have all worked with churches, you know, extensively, for decades, and I'm by far the junior of the three of us and I'm middle-aged, do you? 28:28 - Speaker 3 see a trend of new churches popping up or old churches dying out with the buildings specifically. 28:34 - Speaker 1 It's all over the place. I think there was a push toward bigger and better buildings and you've seen a concentration of that from the 90s up through 10 years ago, but a lot of that's really fallen off. Banks view churches as one of the highest risk assets that they put money into, and so it can be very difficult to get funding from a big bank. There's exceptions, and a lot of the times the exceptions are if you need to borrow five for a small building as a small church average church really it's very difficult to find that funding. But if you want to borrow $50 million as a big church for five people, you'll have 20 banks taking you to lunch trying to get your business, and so it's a pretty wide spectrum that way, and so, yeah, you do see things some buildings kind of fading out. I think a lot of churches hold on to having a building and actually sustaining an organization a lot longer than they should. You end up with churches where the young people are in their 70s and they're down to 15 or 20 people and they really haven't done anything new for 30 years. I think you could argue that they aren't a church anymore at that point where, yeah, they're still meeting and it's not bad that they're doing it, but they're not serving their community. 29:54 Oftentimes the community kind of changes around them. In Chicago you had every 20 years like half the neighborhoods change and so that moves pretty quick and churches tend to end up 40 years later. There are people who used to live in that neighborhood 50 years ago and they commute in from the suburbs to that building but really don't have anything to do with the neighborhood anymore, and so that's a dynamic. Maybe that's unique to Chicago, but I think you've got a mix of that. You've got church planting. You also have older urban church buildings that don't have parking lots, and if you don't have a parking lot like unless you're in the neighborhood and serving your neighborhood, you are functionally obsolete. And that is a reality I think in a lot of spaces is you either need to move back into the neighborhood or have the neighborhood move into your church, or your building's going to be converted into condos, and that's kind of the brutal reality of that. 30:53 But for me, I know there's a huge continuum of churches around a theology of space, from this is the Holy of Holies to like anti-anything cosmetic. I've been in churches that don't have windows because they don't want to distract from worship to iconography and fairly high church and more orthodox contexts and things of that nature. There's a whole continuum For me personally, I kind of fall under. All space is sacred because it's God's and God made all things, but it doesn't make a church building sacred in and of itself, and it's the sacredness of that building comes from the presence of God and his people, not from the facility being holy in and of itself. So you know, that may be a diminutive value of worship space, but that's kind of where I fall personally. 31:42 - Speaker 3 No, I totally agree with you. I think the sacred space we forget is the dwelling of God. But because of sin, he's not dwelling on the earth anymore, but he's dwelling within his people as the temple. So whenever a space occupies human beings of faith, that's his dwelling place until he comes back. So yeah, I think we overvalue material things and especially money too. The way I understand money now is just a tangible form of someone's time right, Because we're all exchanging time for money. 32:11 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I think money becomes a tool. You know where, when you see Jesus say, you know, give the Caesars what is Caesar's and give to the Lord what is the Lord's. And he looks at that face of the coin and it's got Lord what is the Lord's. And he looks at that face of the coin and it's got the face of Caesar on it. And he looks at the face of that person and it has the image of God imprinted on us. And you know those things that are actually of value. When you look in the tech industry and the most valuable thing that they can have is your eyeballs, your attention, your possessing you is their highest commodity in that valuation cycle. And then you look at money and you know here in the West there's a lot of money and you compare that globally. 32:54 And one of the things I've been convicted on is I think it's inevitable that the dollar eventually is not given worth and ascribed worth. 33:04 You talk about, you know what do we value and eventually that's going to go away and we have a moment right now where the dollar is still a valued commodity in the global world and we can divest of these dollars that eventually will be nothing more than kindling and put that treasure into heaven and allocate those things to the Lord. And so we have a small window where we can allocate these dollars and put them to work for kingdom purposes, for ministry work, and we need to be aggressive on how we allocate. You know, look at how aggressive Silicon Valley is with venture capital. How can we as a church be just as aggressive with venture capital into the eternity in the hearts of men? And what's the 30-60-year unfold to that, when the world will give their right arm to? You know, float 50 grand into two venture startups so that, you know, one of them takes off and pays for all of them. And like, what are we doing to venture capital ministry with eternity on the line and not just, you know, making the next billion? 34:09 - Speaker 3 No, I totally agree. I think people don't realize because if you actually look into venture they'll spend a billion dollars on a hundred companies, hoping one of them will a hundred thousand X so that they can get 10 billion back. But like companies lose so much money thrown away. And in my mind I'm like if you just had like one tenth of one percent of the venture capital and you just put it into actual like ministry stuff, that's actually touching people's lives Right In a direct way, because at the end of the day the kingdom is just relationships. 34:41 - Speaker 1 The world calls money a security, and we have no security in these dollars. They could inflate away tomorrow and it could all be gone in a moment. And our security is the Lord. Our inheritance is Him. Our hope is in that and we have. This lie of the world will tell us that if you're 25, save up 30 grand and it'll become a million dollars if you sit on it for 40 or 50 years. And then we have all these people who are in their 70s and 80s, who have financial security and are alone. We need to shift into knowing each other, shift into relationship. To not only value our elders, but to love people is to be present with them, and we need to shift back into relationship. It's critical and money is just money. 35:44 - Speaker 3 It's funny because, as you're saying that, a passage that came to my mind is the shrewd manager who the king says like I'm going to fire you, and then he goes off and cancels everyone's debt in half. And Jesus is like, hey, at least he's smart enough to be wanted in these homes, because he was savvy enough to realize he's going to lose everything. The only thing I have are my relationships with these people, so I might as well gain favor from them. The Christians, on the other hand, are like, oh yeah, we're fine, we're fine, but then all your kids leave and, like you know, your family's in disarray and you're just like I'm alone. Right, we should be investing in relationships, gaining favor, because it's not just doing the good thing, it's as we grow older and our network of people gets larger, you realize like, oh, there's a unity behind this, there's a communal aspect, that we're in this together and as our children get older, at least we're all growing as a generation together. So, yeah, I'm totally with you. 36:35 - Speaker 1 I think one of the dynamics at play in the world, too, is we've talked a lot about money and things on that end, but we also see a lot of people who really are drawn toward having a platform and being known and being famous, and I've heard people talk about you talk to a teenager today what do you want to be when you grow up? 36:53 And half of them want to be an influencer and have a YouTube channel and have people know them and follow them and like them, and that actually, I think, points toward the inclination of our hearts to be known. And being known is not in these kind of dynamics. Being known is that simple, accessible thing in the day-to-day of being known by God. And so the maker and creator of all things, who put the stars in their place and breathed and, by the power of his word, created all that we know and see in the world, wants to intimately know you and be known by you, and has unfolded who he. In reading the Bible, we get to know Him and he intimately knows us, and so that yearning for fame, and in those kinds of things as well, is ultimately met in the Lord. The yearning for money and possessions and things of that nature too, is ultimately us supplanting God and turning to things in the world and sin, and it's just all foundational stuff that goes right back to the garden and there's nothing new under the sun. 38:07 - Speaker 3 Well, I think it's also nuanced. I think if there's a need that's driving you where you feel like you gain self-validation or self-worth in these things, yeah, the purpose is skewed. But if you're gamifying it, in my opinion like going after money and fame for influence, so that you have more of an influence on the words you use and you take that responsibility seriously, I think it's a good thing. But I think young people forget, like the most famous person in human history is Jesus and people want to kill him all the time and people made accusations of like people. Like castle culture started with jesus. I think so. Like for young people. 38:43 Like yeah, if you want to be rich and famous, just understand when you're on the mountaintop, everyone comes after you I would say it began with cain and abel, but oh yes, okay, but like I mean jesus, but at least with jesus, like there was no accusation you can come up with against him and they still made accusations, which is kind of insane, but yeah it is. 39:03 - Speaker 1 it is, it's a when you start to peel back like who is Jesus, what was he about, and that you know as people we saw to his execution. And yet in that awful act, god turns that on a dime early Sunday morning. And in the resurrection, in the ascension of Christ, we look toward our hope and being redeemed. Coming from the world's rejection of God is ultimately God's most full-hearted acceptance of us and that the Lord can, you know, work through that and turn that on a dime and give us hope and life and a future is just extraordinary. I think the gospel is that good news that what the world intends for destruction, what the world corrupts and pollutes, god redeems and His mercy is new today and every morning. 39:58 - Speaker 3 Yeah. One last point I want to make, too, about you saying you know you hope cultural Christianity dies a way quicker death. The irony is, christianity might be the only region that says the leader gave up his life for what he believed to be true, and that, for Christians, we're not defending our faith killing other people. We're defending our faith because we're willing to die for it, and I think that martyrdom is like being lost, especially in the United States, where we feel like we have this right to defend what we think is right rather than no. I'm going to prove it by my life, by laying it down, to show you, even if you kill me, it's okay, because God will do something great through it. 40:37 - Speaker 1 I think some of the most spectacular displays of faith today are in Africa, where you are seeing, whether it be what almost 10 years ago now, the Egyptian Coptic believers who were executed on the beach 20, 25 of them and them holding on to their faith. 40:58 Just a couple months ago my friend runs a mission agency called Africans Reaching Africa and several of the workers were incarcerated and threatened with execution and laws were overturned in those countries and religious freedoms were extended in places that have never had religious freedom in the known history of some of these countries. And you're seeing God opening up doors and people having visions and dreams of Jesus and God moving and working in just extraordinary ways. And so you know, that's stuff where I don't experience, that in my suburban Chicago context at all, and yet I can hear about that and be encouraged by it and know that God is moving and working and my little isolated experience is not even a little facet really of what God's doing. Just amazing to see it. And I would have to think for your team at Faithfully, of connecting in with church leaders and starting to see little resonant impacts of God at work in the world has got to be so encouraging. 42:02 - Speaker 3 Yeah, it's a slow process but little by little we see what God is doing, like meeting people like you, just in events I mean not events, the conference and stuff like that. But it's an interesting journey because we started this journey believing that like this idea and this motivation came from the Lord. And when you have that kind of faith in his purpose, then like the good things are great and the bad things are just like kind of throwaways and it just gives you this perseverance to keep moving forward because there's like this, not a big no, it's just more of like I don't know. So we keep going until you know the Lord says no and he hasn't said no yet. So it's been. It's been a slow but humbly, humble walk toward what we're trying to do. 42:47 - Speaker 1 That's great. I appreciate you guys having the courage to step out and take initiative on this and entrepreneurial thing and may well be a real service to the church. If nothing else, I think it becomes an exercise for you guys and having a sense where maybe this is something that God wants to do and work. We venture in those things. You know we talk about venture capital before with ministry and there's a dynamic of that very much at play for you guys, where you're taking a risk and taking a venture and who knows what the Lord could do to take that and multiply it. And you know we count the cost before we build. But we also look to you know how might God take this and multiply it and grow it, and that takes courage, thank you. 43:29 - Speaker 3 You kinda answered the question I was gonna ask. But yeah, let me ask you three questions to end the podcast. When was the last time you cried? 43:36 - Speaker 1 Yesterday. How come I was at church and considering things of who God is and His goodness. Yeah, the gospel makes me cry every time too. Not every time, but oftentimes. You know, in worship and singing, and you know those things. I think the Lord meets us there and to be reminded of who he is is overwhelming. 43:57 - Speaker 3 I'm just in a season where, like my heart's like ruined forever. So, like any little thing, I cry a lot now and it's cathartic. I realize crying is really good for you, at least for me. 44:06 - Speaker 1 Yeah, it has a time and a place and I think the Lord gives that to us and we see, you know, I think that's part of even the spirit knowing, you know, we talk about speaking in tongues church leaders that I've ever seen and that would help me so much in all of my work For that end. I hope that you're successful in it. When I first met you, my initial comment was, oh, I've seen like a hundred of these come and go and I hope this works. You have an uphill battle and so, yeah, I think it's a challenge that way, but I enjoy seeing what people are passionate about in their faith. 44:58 And you know, channels like this can get used and abused and not used effectively, but like its highest and best becomes. Hey, I'm working on this thing, you know, can people help me out? Or can you join in with it and seeing people advocate for that. Or, hey, we've done X, y or Z and we're seeing God move in this way and that's encouraging. Or you can take an aspect of it and God can use that as kind of a spark to shift into other ministry experiences people in similar locations with a similar heart for work, being able to collaborate and connect from that end and I mean there's just a whole multitude of things that could be really positive that come out of that, and so I'm hopeful for you guys that you're able to really gain traction and to see people embrace this as a tool for connecting with fellow workers and laboring together for the glory of God. 45:57 And how can we be praying for you and your family? You know, my wife is. She teaches at a Bible study fellowship group and is on staff with a group called the Gospel Coalition and is starting up graduate school at a seminary. So she has a lot going on that way and then my son going into middle school next, next fall, and navigating that and being able to grow and love for each other as a family and clinging on to the Lord and just nothing terribly exceptional on that, but just those basic things all right. 46:34 - Speaker 3 Well, that's it for the podcast, and do you have any other things you want to promote or say? 46:39 - Speaker 1 no, I hit that stuff early so you know. For net end again, I think if you're part of a church, a church dash, connect that with tinder house publishers, navpress, hendrickson Publishing, rose Publishing, all those in Focus on the Family, all those publishers kind of all feed into that. There's bulk discounts that start with your first copy for 30% off, goes up to 45% off for larger orders, and I just think it's a great tool and resource that way. I've done a lot to like reorder If you search for Bibles, and we have different ways of having that sorted and kind of a logic behind that, behind the scenes that's been developed, and so I think it's a really, really great tool for the church. So that would be the biggest thing I'd want to push at this point of use it for your church. 47:26 - Speaker 3 Yeah, we'll have the link in the bio of the description, perfect. 47:30 - Speaker 1 Okay, yanni, thank you for your church. Yeah, we'll have the link in the bio of the description. Perfect, okay, yanni, thank you for your time. Thank you for coordinating with me here and, I'm sure, endless hours of work that you put in on the back end to make Faithfully work. 47:39 - Speaker 3 Thank you All. Right, that's it for the podcast. Bye guys. 47:41 - Speaker 2 Thank you for tuning in to the Faithly Stories podcast. We pray this episode gave you the encouragement you needed to continue on your journey. The Faithly Stories podcast is brought to you by Faithly, an online community committed to empowering church leaders, pastors, staff and volunteers. The Faithly digital platform offers innovative and practical tools and resources to enhance connection, foster collaboration and promote growth within the church and ministry space. Remember to subscribe, rate and review our podcast to help reach more listeners like you. Stay tuned for more uplifting tales from the front lines of ministry on the Faithly Podcast. Stay bold, stay faithful and never underestimate the power of your own story.